Monday, March 7, 2011

The Fall of Terok Nor

The Millenium trilogy was, prior to Destiny, the most epic story ever approached in Trek literature, and in fact even spawned a PC game -- a third-person action/adventure shooter called The Fallen. It's a story of the past and future, of grand mythology, in which the good guys battle for nothing less than the existence of the Universe -- and lose. It brings together characters from all the Next Generation-era shows, and is responsible for many of my favorite scenes in Trek literature. But it all started when an Andorian merchantman of questionable repute was found dead in the lower levels of the station...and flooded Deep Space Nine with mysteries.

The investigation of the Andorian's murder leads to two more bodies -- old bodies, which had been fused into the station's bulkheads at some point around the Day of Withdrawal, when the Cardassian Union ended its occupation of Bajor and abandoned its ore-mining station -- a day, strangely enough, that three of the station's residents who were around back then can't remember. Suddenly smugglers are coming to the station in droves, which frustrates Captain Sisko mightily, given that he's in the middle of the Federation's equivalent of World War 2. All the little threads seem to lead to three religious artifacts, the Red Orbs of Jalbador -- which could open a second wormhole. Though dismissed by most Bajorans as apocryphal, the various smugglers, a sect of Bajoran cultists, and three Cardassian operatives pretending to be humanitarian officials are all quite obviously interested in finding them.

This first volume of the trilogy is an impressive start: mystery and adventure seem to end in resolution, only things to go badly wrong: Terok Nor ends with the destruction of the station and the DS9 crew aboard the Defiant being thrown into a nightmare.

I had no intention of re-reading this: I just found the first volume while digging through a trunk of books looking for The Ancestor's Tale, and foolishly opened it up to see if it was good as I remembered. I read 200+ pages that very night and 200+ more the next day. It would appear my fond memories do it justice.